1. Field of the Invention
The invention generally relates to a telemetry system and method for parsing a set of archived telemetry streams and reconstructing the data contained within the set of archived telemetry streams into a newly constructed set of telemetry streams. The newly constructed set of telemetry streams are used to evaluate the performance of a wide variety of ground based systems when used as test driver data. The availability of test driver data produced by the preferred embodiment of the invention shortens ground system development time lines resulting in a reduction in overall program costs.
2. Description of Related Art
Historically, developers of complex systems require an environment to conduct testing to ascertain performance and specification compliance during different stages of development. The military fields complex systems such as air-to-air missiles, surface-to-air missiles, ballistic missiles, and all types of manned and unmanned aircraft. Commercial entities field all types of manned and unmanned aircraft. Each of these complex systems requires a supportive test environment during the development stages.
Military and commercial test ranges rely heavily on the ability to collect data, collect information, and to retransmit the collected data and information in the form of telemetry streams. Software programs onboard the vehicle under test format selected flight parameters and event data into defined telemetry streams that may be transmitted from the vehicle under test and received by a ground station. The telemetry streams are then processed at the receiving ground station and are transformed into analog and digital data suitable for analysis and performance assessment. The accuracy of the data collection and transformation are evaluated at various development stages of the vehicle's operational flight program and the vehicle's telemetry system development.
Generally, the development of a complex system matures during the course of a development time line and then continues to mature over the life span of the vehicle. Vehicles with long life spans are susceptible to component obsolescence, subsequent modernization, and the ever present upgrading of software. It is the subsequent modernization of hardware and upgrading of software that drive many mature and complex systems back into a test phase.
It is known to automatically generate software code and data files along with a number of auxiliary data files for use with telemetry software. The ability to automatically generate software code and data files is dependent upon a working operational flight program, a telemetry file definition and test input data. One such system is described in a Patent Application Publication No. 2007/0032922, titled as AUTOMATIC GENERATION OF TELEMETRY FLIGHT SOFTWARE ACCOMPANYING SPECIFICATIONS, AND DECODE FILES and is also described in a U.S. Pat. No. 7,099,753, having the same title. What is unknown in the art is the ability to generate a reconstructed set of telemetry data streams from archived sets of telemetry data streams collected during a previously conducted live test, independent of an operational flight program or working telemetry hardware.
One use of the Multiple Telemetry Stream Parsing and Reconstruction System (MTSP) is to provide test data within a telemetry stream to fill a gap in test data that occurs when a vehicle is simultaneously undergoing a telemetry hardware upgrade, a telemetry parameter definition upgrade, and the ground receiving station's software and hardware are adapting to these vehicle changes. When all of these modifications and upgrades are addressed serially in time the vehicle program's schedule is drawn out, overall program risk is shifted to the last testing stage, and any attendant increased program costs are incurred when milestones are missed.
The advantage of the preferred embodiment is that a reconstructed set of telemetry streams containing what appears to the user to be live data conforming to the requirements of the new telemetry system are available to drive ground station systems. The reconstructed live data streams are generated and used to conduct tests independent of the vehicle's operational flight program, independent of the vehicle's telemetry system, and are also used to independently test the changes made at the ground receiving station. In addition to the MTSP, all that is necessary is a set of previously recorded telemetry test data and the new telemetry definition formats. The reconstruction process that generates the reconstructed telemetry streams is accomplished by the MTSP resulting in a shortened development timeline, a shift of risk to an earlier stage of the program, and reducing program costs by allowing development of the vehicle's telemetry hardware and software changes to be performed in parallel with those changes occurring at the ground station. Running live data having known expected parameters through a ground station's software and display suite will uncover any errors induced while upgrading the vehicle telemetry system or changing the ground station software and hardware. The described apparatus and method circumvents the need for actual updated telemetry recordings and allows a recertification of the range safety and range users displays to be performed in parallel.